It's been an unsettling few days. Instructive, but unsettling. I subscribe to what Humphrey Bogart's detective says in The Maltese Falcon. "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble," he tells a would-be client. If you write this column, you make a few enemies. I just like them to be the right ones.

It began with an article I wrote about the electoral demise of Ken Livingstone in the London mayoralty. I referred to a meeting Livingstone had with Jewish Labour activists who wanted to repair the rift that opened up between them during his final stint in power. It didn't go well. I sought to make the point that having been offered an olive branch, it was silly of him to upset a good proportion of them all over again. Only that wasn't how I said it. In an early draft, dashed off with a view to further revision, I messed up. I said Ken should have made more effort with London's "Jewish political establishment". That clumsy wording was eradicated in all later drafts, including the one submitted for publication. Sod's law, as the production team tried to keep up with the busy events of an election night, the first draft with the offending phrase was the one they used.

On spotting the error at 9.30 the next morning, I changed the web version to reflect what should have been published, but there it was, in thousands of newspapers. Couldn't change them.

Cue much understandable anger on Twitter. "What a disgrace! Unforgivable," said one user. "I believe he was talking about the Learned Elders of Zion who he believes control British local politics," said BrianofLondon. I tweeted to explain what had happened and to apologise. Some accepted it; some didn't.

And what is to be learned from this? One, that while it is impossible to do this job without upsetting somebody, it is always distressing to hurt people unintentionally. Two, a thought about social media. As a means of allowing people to raise a voice, an extraordinary phenomenon.

And the third is the absurdity of it all. I rail against stereotyping and discrimination. Yet, in a moment, brain disengaged, I lapsed into hurtful error. Something to consider, perhaps, next time someone says something I object to. Diverse Britain. We're all feeling our way.